Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday June 26, 2011 @08:22AM
from the make-your-kids-do-the-dishes dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A device created by the University of Tokyo and Sony Laboratories called PossessedHand allows researchers to control a subject's hand via electrical stimulation. While currently being used to teach students to play the koto, a Japanese traditional stringed instruments, just imagine the possibilities! Twilight Zone anyone?"

Sony is just looking for a way to install a DRM rootkit on your nervous system.

Remember that article from a week ago about being able to turn memories on and off in rats with electrical signals [newscientist.com]? Now the next time you hear/view copyrighted media you'll immediately forget what you saw if you stop paying subscription fees for those memories.

Now the next time you hear/view copyrighted media you'll immediately forget what you saw if you stop paying subscription fees for those memories.

You seem to imply that but just stopping a subscription I could get some of those things out of my head. That might not be a bad thing. Sounds cheaper and less dangerous than a power drill from Home Depot.

Even worse, there could be no 12 years old hackers so your hand would be instead controlled by a corporation that rooted our PCs without telling anything just because they don't like you to possibly violate their rights. That is, ethically speaking, a just below average corporation:D

In general this tech will likely end up with getting a genre of dystopic literature on its own: self inflicted deaths or torture for better cover up of the culprits and stuff like that.

technology can only be applied toward advancing biomedical sciences
in the greater interest of the public good and indeed that of humankind in general

its just too bad the corporation thats developed it regards its customers as bumbling tits,
their private information as no more than a step stone toward profit,
and their technology as some type of (literal as well) black box from which only cash should flow into and
conformity exercised in its presence

Okay, all jokes aside, the stated use of this tech is friggin' awesome! Learning to play an instrument with an instructor that can literally position your hand for you sounds like a pretty novel experience. You could use it to help teach all kinds of musical instruments. Scale it up and you could do some pretty nifty stuff, too. I bet it'd be useful for certain types of physical therapy. You could use it for a force-feedback gaming. With some accelerometers and orientation sensors you could probably use a s

All the examples you give are well and good, but since we're not talking about a company or research lab I'd put any trust in, my thoughts go more to the question how this could be abused to gain control over my hands.

It's already used in physiotherapy / physical therapy. It's called Electro-Muscle Stimulation. It helps to build proprioceptive feedback in patients with injuries.
On a side note, if you jack up the dial, it'll turn your extremity into a fully seized claw. Fun times.

blah blah blah on how this could help humanity and.01% of the world's population with a disability or in need of a prosthetic.

Tamaki is confident that people will get used to the idea once they see how useful it can be: "We believe convenient technology will overcome a feeling of fear."

Justifiable fear. What the fuck is with the Japanese penchant for controlling living things remotely? If the damn \. search was half useful you would find cockroaches and human balance having been controlled remotely. Is

Don't be stupid. Machines don't think. They won't rise up. Ever. That's just scifi silliness, akin to time travel and teleportation. What you should be worried about is how people will use this. People can be a lot more sinister than some fictional robot overlord. This has obvious implications in slave labor and population control. Just install some circuitry in convicted felons to keep them nice and controlled in prison, and a remote kill switch switch should do wonders for recidivism. And at that

On the bright side, lawyers will be cheering on this piece of technology as sexual harassment lawsuit suddenly became a lot more complicated.

Defendant: "I'm sorry your honor, I did not mean to smack Ms Fanny Widebottom delicious booty. Sony implanted a hand controlling device in me"
Lawyer : "It's true your honor. My client simply has no control over his hands due to the defective product being hacked."

I also can't help but think about what this could do to further research into creating zombies.

I wonder if this could be coupled with the 'thinking cap' technology that allows you to control your computer with your thoughts. Control your hand with your mind, even if the nerves in between have been severed. Would obviously work best before atrophy set in.

Google for "Functional Muscle Stimulation" research over the last 3 decades. Some recent big milestones too.I visited one researcher and saw the neat rows and columns of circular scars where he had taken core samples ofhis own muscles during experiments. n > 100. That is dedication.

You probably need a special proprietary Sony hand, because Sony products seem to have exceptional capabilities for getting hacked. I would think our own genetics would make for some tougher hacking than anything Sony puts out or uses, which would obviously call for a third-party hand.

- to help people move whose nerves are damaged. Combine that with mind readers (ex. Emotiv [emotiv.com], NeuroSky [neurosky.com]) and we're part way there. We'd also need something to send feedback feeling from the severed area to the brain.

- to help prevent atrophy in people in coma by animating them. (Hmm... could it be used to animate the dead...?)

- to teach people handy skills (which is what the article suggests), remotely even.

- as material in sci-fi movies to remote control characters, either to commit he

That's great, but I'd like to know if there's any chance of doing this in reverse. That is, a non-invasive method of receiving electrical hand signals and converting them to inputs to a computer. Such a device would be much better than the previous idea I've been wheeling out every now and then on/. as a replacement for electrodes in the brain for computer feedback.

Did we start doing this somewhere like 150 years ago with dead frogs? Bruce Lee used this type of electro-stimulation to work out his muscles. All Sony is doing is controlling it with a new control program that makes your hand go to Sony.com and order lots and lots of crappy hardware.:)

I'm quite protective of my body, the mere idea that someone else might be controlling part of it freaks me out to no end. I'm probably at the extreme end of the spectrum here, but I could not see me living, knowing that my existence depends on a machine that is not under my control. Fortunately I only had to go get an operation once, and it took them quite a lot of sedatives to calm me to the point where they could knock me out.

Plus you are a liar. After a few months paralyzed in a bed with someone else having to feed you and wipe your ass everyday you would jump at the first doctor that offered a small device to allow you to walk once again.

Go ahead and convince us that you'd lie there for years till you died just to "protect your body".

Paralyzed people who's muscles can be controlled to a functional state, would be nice.Perhaps a suit that would enable people to walk. Dunno.

Yeah, its too bad all the 7th graders here decided to trash Sony rather than see the value of this for all the paralyzed people in the world. Even worse are the fully functioning people who insist that if it came to pass that they were paralyzed they would remain so rather than strap on a device that allows them to once again control their own limbs. Such big talk from someone who has never rolled a day in a wheelchair.